(January 30, 2015 at 9:06 am)Xeno Wrote: Apologies if this has already been done.
Religion has in many ways influenced the language, with phrases like "God forbid", "Thank God", "Good Lord" or a personal ironic favorite of mine, "Holy shit".
Atheists: Do you work around those phrases or do you say them anyway?
Theists: Do you think that falls under taking your lord's name in vain?
Non-native English speakers: Is your language similarly influenced by religion?
Personally I find saying these things awkward, so I try to work around them. There are multiple similar phrases like that in Polish, which I also avoid.
I don't worry much about these words. But theists, particularly fundamentalists often do. You see, they believe in magic words. It comes of believing in magic. After all, if you believe a god spoke the world into existence, believing in magic words is pretty natural.
I use some of these words and phrases and not others. But it has to do with culture and habit, not thinking. Goodbye, really means go with god, but that's not what I mean when I say it. In extremity I may say "Christ" instead of "fuck" though not always. So far it hasn't magically made me believe Jesus was christ. When I say damn it, I don't mean I believe in eternal hell fire and saying it won't make there be an eternal hellfire.
Maybe I could get the fundies to swear "Holy Evolution." Then they wouldn't have to worry about blasphemy, and they might begin to understand that words aren't magic.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
